Waiting For Your Reincarnation – Chapter 66

Author: Dakku-san

“Ms. Yeon-young, what are you looking at?”

“The clock tower.”

Yeon-young stared at the barricade in front of the clock tower in the middle of the square.

It had already been a week since the soul abduction incident.

The sorting of the snarled out souls had been completed, and Laurendia had been safely returned to the Fourth Branch.

It would have been nice if they could have saved them all, but they couldn’t.

Sly’s powder was relatively effective on the souls that were still in the slow process of snarlizing, but it was not as effective on the souls that were nearing the end of their snarlization.

Saeri made the decision to destroy the souls that had finished snarling, and Yeon-young could not argue with her.

Despite her efforts, it was inevitable.

The clock tower was closed to investigate the incident, and the First Branch was left in a somber mood for a while.

She came to the front of the Clock Tower with a single flower in their honor.

Ryu Won looked at the Clock Tower for a long time, wondering if she felt the same way, and then spoke.

“I didn’t know that the Clock Tower, where time stood still and no one cared, could be the stronghold of the Snarl.”

“Yeah, really.”

The Clock Tower hid a portal of unknown origin.

It turned out to be connected to the forest where Iris’ Pillar stood.

The place where the souls were imprisoned was a house secretly built in a tunnel in the ground.

After an investigation, the house was demolished.

Yeon-young wondered if the hole Jareem had fallen into and the black aura she had seen at the festival had something to do with it.

“Mr. Daeheon is still here, right?”

“Yes, he disappeared without a trace.”

As soon as Yeon-young mentioned Daeheon’s name, Jaeho rushed to the center, but he couldn’t catch him.

Daeheon disappeared from this world without a trace.

The Center determined that the birth of the Snarl mutant and the increase in the Snarl population were closely related to Daeheon.

As a result, an APB was issued for him in the world of Tanato.

These days, the special team was busy investigating Daeheon.

Yeon-young placed the flowers she had brought down in front of the clock tower.

“Huh?”

The clock tower swayed slightly.

Yeon-young shook her head and looked at the clock tower again.

It was motionless, as if it hadn’t felt any vibrations.

“Yeon-young!”

Yeon-young turned around to find the owner of the cheerful voice calling out to her.

In the distance, she saw Inuri, wearing a straw hat, running towards her with a beaming face.

Luckily, Inuri hadn’t been burned too badly and had been rescued from the building that day, making him a survivor of the kidnapping.

“Ha…, woohoo… I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye when I saw you in the building.”

“Are you feeling better now?”

“I’m much better, I’ve even started farming again, it’s all thanks to you, Yeon-young, please take this.”

Inuri cleared his throat and shyly held the basket in both hands in front of Yeon-young’s face.

Ryu Won stood in their way, eyeing the basket suspiciously to see what it contained.

Ever since the Snarl kidnapping incident, Ryu Won had been on edge. He was suspicious and wary of anything that had to do with Yeon-young.

Pushing back like a puppy, Inuri was startled to see Ryu Won rummaging through the basket.

“Hey, Ryu Won, you’ll ruin everything if you handle it like that.”

“Mr. Inuri, what is all this?”

As if to prove his point, the basket was filled with colorful vegetables.

The vegetables were all large, sturdy, and shiny, and it was easy to see how successful Mr. Inuri’s farming had been.

“These are vegetables from our farm that go to Telemart, Ms. Yeon-young.”

“What?”

“From now on, until you are reincarnated, I will be responsible for your food for the rest of your life.”

Ryu Won’s eyebrows arched when Inuri said the word “lifetime”.

He let out a disarming laugh and blocked her way.

Yeon-young stuck her head out from behind him to greet Inuri.

“I accept it with a grateful heart.”

“Ms. Yeon-young, why are you betraying me?”

“What?”

“Why would you accept it with a heart?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s not what it means to be responsible for the rest of your life? You are so naive, Ms. Yeon-young.”

Ryu Won grabbed the tail of Yeon-young’s words and let them hang.

He made a light pun, making her the one in the wrong.

She shook her head and pushed Ryu Won aside.

She reached out to take the basket that Inuri had handed her. As she did so, Inuri’s hand holding the basket touched Yeon-young’s.

“Ugh.”

The basket didn’t make it to Yeon-young’s arms but bounced on the floor.

Yeon-young was startled with a severe headache, as if someone had hit her hard on the head with a hammer.

“Yeon-young, what’s wrong? Yeon-young?”

“Ms. Yeon-young, are you okay?”

Ryu Won and Inuri’s voices seemed to jumble together in her ears like a video tape rewound backwards.

Yeon-young’s vision became increasingly blurred, and the background of the clock tower slowly disappeared.

Soon, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of memories flashed before her.

It was as if her mind had been completely unlocked, and the number of memories was vastly different from what she had seen before.

No matter which memory Yeon-young chose to look at, the memories of Inuri’s life unfolded.

His birth, going to school in a gray uniform, surprising people by catching worms, and more.

The memories flashed by in rapid succession.

“Uugh.”

Yeon-young felt nauseous as she watched the memories pass before her eyes like a fast-moving mobile phone.

She waved her hand, but the memories kept coming.

Finally, she saw the memory of Inuri’s death. He had been in a car accident on his way home from a night of self-study.

She covered her eyes with her hands when she saw the bloodied road and the mangled body.

Even though she didn’t want to see it, information about Inuri’s past life flooded into her mind, disorienting her.

Fear surged through her at the thought of reading another’s memories for the first time.

“Please. Stop.”

The world fell silent.

* * *

When the dizziness subsided and she opened her eyes, the world of memories faded and she saw an emergency room.

Yeon-young slowly rose from the bed and laid her head on the back.

Ryu Won leaned against the wall and looked at her as if he had always been there.

“Hi…”

“I can’t leave you alone.”

As soon as she opened her eyes, she looked up at the ceiling of the emergency room and remembered the tarot card reading she’d seen during the festival.

She couldn’t believe how well it fit.

She wondered what the mirage-like spirit had been that had given her the reading.

Just then, someone opened the door, waving a test sheet, and stepped inside.

It was a young woman in a white lab coat who looked a little nervous.

She looked like she’d been immediately appointed to the emergency room on behalf of Daeheon.

“Hi, I’m Diane.”

“What is it?”

He cut her off before she had finished introducing herself, which was very uncharacteristic of him.

Ryu Won’s eyes were piercing as he asked about Yeon-young’s condition.

Diane immediately recognized the question and replied.

“Hmm… I’m not really sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what I can tell from the tests is that your abilities have improved a lot.”

“What? My abilities?”

“Yeah, I think you’ve gone beyond your abilities, just like the rest of the special team, but that’s not normal. There’s no such thing as going from zero to maximum.”

Diane looked genuinely confused and flipped through the test several times.

She tilted her head and looked up at Yeon-young with her fresh green eyes.

“Before you collapsed, did you feel sick anywhere else?”

“She get teleportation sickness, and whenever she read memories, she collapse if she don’t feel well, right, Ms. Yeon-Young?”

“When I was abducted, I got severe dizziness and headaches.”

There was an unspoken rule at the center that Yeon-young was not allowed to talk about her abduction.

It was out of respect for her as a victim. But when Yeon-young took the initiative to talk about it, everyone fell silent.

“But as soon as I came back to the center, I was fine, so I’m not sure if it was because I was beyond my capabilities.”

“As a doctor, there are two possible causes: the first is that the trauma of being kidnapped caused you to unknowingly exceed your abilities, and the second is that Inuri has an ability called amplification and unknowingly amplified Yeon-young’s abilities.”

Yeon-young decided that both of Diane’s theories made sense.

“Either way, I think that’s why you can’t control your abilities properly. Whether it’s the former or the latter, I don’t think it’s temporary, so I think you need to keep coming to Center Hospital from now on. For now, you’re going to have a lot on your mind, so get some rest. These are my orders as your doctor.”

Despite her nervousness, Diane left the advice stiffly and walked out.

Once she was gone, the room was again breathtakingly silent.

Ryu Won was uncharacteristically deep in thought and didn’t even joke with her at first.

Feeling awkward in the silence, Yeon-young spoke up first.

“What are you thinking about?”

His eyes, which had been staring into space, slowly filled with her.

When she tried to push herself out of bed, he took slow steps toward her.

He pushed her shoulders back down, gently, and sat her back down.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Yeah, you’ve been quiet.”

“If you knew, you’d freak out and run away. Isn’t it better that you don’t know?”

“It’s okay, don’t say anything.”